Magic is a game of adaptation.
They juke left, so you need to move left. They set up a screen, and you need to slide by the pick. They bring Kor Firewalkers to their side of the table, and so you need to bring Doom Blades to yours.
But what happens when things don’t go as planned?
If they juke right, you can’t keep moving left. If they go for a layup, you can’t position your man to slide. If they bring in Rest for the Weary and Sunspring Expedition, you can’t stick on the Doom Blade plan.
When you present a deck, new or old, everyone always clamors for a sideboard plan. Life is too fast to go out to the lake with a friend and drop some red and white bobbers in the water. People want a prepackaged strategy they can copy onto an index card and put at the back of their deckbox for later reference. They’re the Lunchables of tournament Magic. Cut and dry sideboard plans provide the illusion of strategy and decision-making, but ultimately lock you into dipping your crackers into either cheese or applesauce.
I have provided plenty of sideboarding guides with the decks I write about, many extensively so. But, despite how I carefully lay out each matchup, you can often find me deviating from those plans in actual games.
Let me explain.
A lot of very good players at PTQs, Grands Prix, and even Pro Tours will have their sideboard plans written out ahead of time, and rightfully so. Having an idea of how to sideboard is crucial. But what separates a lot of average players from the people who do extraordinarily well is the ability to always make their sideboard cards matter. Instead of retreating into their trench-like rut and retrieving the same tools over and over, they reforge their tools to adapt to the situation.
So, what is all of this about? Learning how to sideboard in a way that is actually correct instead of just sideboarding the same way you always do in a certain matchup.
Magic tournaments encourage innovation. If everyone just brought stock decks from two weeks ago to your PTQs, then your pre-crafted notes are going to be perfect. However, that’s not how events actually play out. Think about it. When was the last time you played against a deck in a tournament which was entirely lifted from the pages of the Tournament Center? Maybe, at most, once or twice a PTQ — and that’s being generous. Are they playing archetypes that have proven themselves in the format? Sure. But the actual, card-for-card list of the GP winner from two weeks ago? Unlikely. People innovate and change their decks — for better or worse. And you have to be prepared for them.
Enough conceptualizing. Let me introduce this to you with some very real scenarios.
I have been playing a lot of Jund lately. While the deck is a lot more skill intensive than people give it credit for, you have to get little edges where you can in deckbuilding and sideboarding. In the mirror, traditionally the plan is to cut all of your Maelstrom Pulses for whatever mirror cards you have. This is a fine plan, and you could happily just make that switch every game two and three and never even think about it.
But, in an effort to gain an edge, people have been changing their maindecks. Sometimes radically so. Just the other day, I had someone show me Garruk, Liliana, Chandra, and Sarkhan in game 1. Weird, huh?
I am sure a lot of people would just bemoan variance and their opponent’s mirror-heavy decision to maindeck that many planeswalkers. Then they would proceed as normal and remove their Pulses for their Ruinblasters or what have you and call it good. It sure is too bad you don’t have more answers to planeswalkers in your sideboard. Those guys can cause some real problems in the mirror.
You see what happened there? If you adhere to your normal Jund plan and just cut the cards you always do, your deck ends up far worse.
Obvious, you say? Maybe that’s too heavy-handed an example. Let me use another one to illustrate my point.
What if your opponent’s deck has Lotus Cobra?
Your deck has Lightning Bolt. You may have planned to take it out in whatever matchup, but if they have Lotus Cobra then Lightning Bolt absolutely must stay in. After Pulse, a lot of people cut Bolt in the mirror. But when my opponent shows me a Cobra, or I expect he has them due to a game 1 Vengevine, I make sure to leave all of my Bolts in.
Another good example is the U/G Turboland deck. I know previous iterations of that deck — such as Ali Aintrazi version from the Philadelphia StarCityGames.com Open — had no good creatures to Bolt. Perhaps, with that in mind, your sideboard plan would be to board out all of your Bolts. It would pose quite a problem for you, then, if Luis Scott-Vargas cast a Lotus Cobra on the second turn after sideboarding against you!
Perhaps these are some simplistic examples, but it can be hard to describe the miniscule changes which can make or break matchups. More often than these gigantic sweeping changes, it’s the small one or two card tweaks. You think your opponent will fall for walking into your Day of Judgment sideboard plan, so you bring them in. You think your Scapeshift opponent is probably on the cutting edge enough to have Oona, so you leave two Gatekeeper of Malakir in your deck.
How is it that you can come to these conclusions? The key is all in setting your preconceived notions about decks aside and thinking about the matchup in the abstract.
Because of the high velocity of information in today’s Magic era, we tend to garner information about decks and then compartmentalize them as archetypes. That is to say, when we think of a deck like Mythic we think of the combined Birds and Hierarchs, Knights and Sovereigns that herald the archetype. Instead of thinking about just a deck, however, we need to step back and look at the individual cards alongside the overall strategy. How are they going to beat me? What cards might they sideboard in? What cards did I see which were unusual? Those are all questions to consider.
For example, at Grand Prix: DC, if you played against the Next Level Bant deck for the first time and brought in the same tools you use against Mythic because you simply saw Bant colors, you could have easily sideboarded completely incorrectly.
That brings us to the next point of discussion, which is rogue decks. When you are too used to sideboarding based on a list, it can be difficult to figure out what you want when facing the unknown. You don’t just want to freeze up and not sideboard — or worse yet, sideboard in a way that makes your deck worse — against them. That gives them just that much of an extra advantage. Once again, you need to think about the cards they played and what their strategy is. Not just whether are they beat down or control, but how they plan to fight you. Are they going to disrupt your hand? Attack certain cards in your deck? Disable your creatures? If you can figure this part out, then you want to sideboard in a plan to counteract theirs. For example, if you encounter a mill deck and you’re playing control, bring in your Kor Firewalkers! They’re going to expect to just attack your library and will have cut creature removal, and so the Firewalkers can put a clock on them.
Arguably most applicably, this topic deserves some discussion in the way of Limited. Kenji Tsumura once said that you should sideboard in every single Limited match. While I think that’s a little extreme, players definitely do not sideboard enough in limited in general. Why not? Because a lot of people probably don’t realize how to do so correctly. Sure, if your opponent has three Temporal Isolations it makes sense to bring in a Molder. That’s pretty easy to figure out. But what if your opponent is playing a fairly aggressive deck in Rise Limited and your deck is full of six-drops? You probably want to even out your curve in sideboarding by cutting some of your more expensive spells, no matter how powerful they may be, for cards that can hold the ground early on like Reinforced Bulwark. Sure, the Bulwark is a much worse card — but you need it to survive long enough.
The opposite is also true. If you end up in a slow deck mirror match, you can safely cut out early blockers and maybe even some cards like Last Kiss for late game cards. If it’s all going to be about fighting each other with Eldrazi, then give yourself the upper hand.
Finally, a lot of people only pull out their sideboards for game number two of a match. In reality, a ton also happens for the third game! Not only does who is going to play have a high chance of changing, but you have more information to work with. Once you know what your opponent’s sideboard plan is, you can switch your sideboarding around in more ways than a simple list would allow.
Sideboarding is one of the trickiest aspects of Magic, and certainly one which has garnered a lot of articles and discussion. Hopefully this can add to that canon. Don’t just be a slave to how you plan to sideboard, and don’t be afraid to trust your instincts. In the online PTQ last Tuesday, I played the Jund mirror five times — and sideboarded differently each and every time. My record? 5-0. By identifying the differences in my opponent’s Jund Builds not only in time for game 2 but also for game 3, I was able to configure my deck against Jund in the best way each time. Switching your deck up for each game of a match is not a trait to be undervalued. I’d love to hear your thoughts and troubles with sideboarding on the fly either via e-mail at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com or by posting in the forums. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else